Characters / Dumbing of Age: Clark Wing

Dumbing of Age: Clark Wing | Beck Wing | Other Students | Non-students

Dumbing of Age characters who live in Clark Wing, the girls' floor of Indiana University's Read Hall dormitory.

Because of the large Ensemble Cast and Switching P.O.V., characters are listed in alphabetical order by full first name.

Amber O'Malley/Amazi-Girl

"One second, killing spiders."

A geeky girl who enjoys playing video games, Amber hides a few...issues. Dina is her roommate.

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• Adaptational Badass: In Shortpacked!, Amazi-Girl's ability was being "immune to criticism" and while she had her moments she was for the most part a fairly minor comedic bit. In DOA Amber is quite strong and durable and her fights have an element of danger to them largely absent in Shortpacked!.
• Adaptation Deviation: In Shortpacked! Amber is merely a nerdy neurotypical person with a superhero alternate identity, but in Dumbing of Age Amber has DID and Amazi-Girl is her alter.
• Adaptational Romance Downgrade: She and Mike don't get together like in Shortpacked! due to the latter's death at the end of Book 10.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Amber underestimates her own ability to form connections and be social, and sees herself primarily as unstable and violent. This is not how others see her—her enemies underestimate her in her uncostumed persona, and her friends are often shocked when they first find out just how brutal Amber can get.
• Break the Cutie: When she was a teenager, Ethan got taken hostage by Sal, and Blaine goaded Amber about her uselessness. As a result, Amber stabbed a restrained Sal in the hand—the beginning of Amber's long road of violent impulses and imperfect attempts to compartmentalize them.
• Bruce Wayne Held Hostage: In "When It Crumbles", her father kidnaps several students, including her, to find Amazi-Girl.
• Clark Kenting: All it takes is a domino mask and Amber becomes unidentifiable. Some characters are merely oblivious, most don't interact enough with Amber to make the connection, and Blaine has a vested interest in never admitting his daughter could do anything.
• Crazy-Prepared: As Amazi-Girl, she carries multiple tools and weapons on her costume at all times, including grappling hook and rope, tire-piercing spike balls... and even Amazi-Girl-themed condoms.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Had a very unhappy childhood due to suffering physical and emotional abuse from her father, which when combined with him effectively goading her into stabbing Sal in the hand following the robbery incident by calling her a coward, has made her a bit of a Broken Bird.
• Death Glare: Gives an epic one to Ethan upon finding him at Galasso's hooked up with Joyce.
• Dramatic Unmask: After a heart-to-heart with Walky, she unmasks herself for him... only for him to not recognize her.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: In the first few months of strips, Amber's fixation isn't on mobile games but rather an unidentified MMO with a vague resemblance to World of Warcraft.
• Enemy Mine: Once Ryan shows up again, Amazi-Girl and Sal reach an unspoken truce to hunt down the bigger fish. There's some major road bumps along the way, but eventually the two make an effort at genuine friendship.
• Everyone Has Standards: Her hatred for Sal drives a lot of her, but even she is mortified when a conservative party rally cheers on her confrontation with Sal with incredibly racist rhetoric, to the point where she attempts to deescalate the conflict.
• Evil Me Scares Me: After beating her father to a pulp and escaping, the event visibly disturbs her greatly, to the point she doesn't know anymore where lies the frontier between her Amazi-Girl persona and herself, and sends her once again in a Heroic BSoD. Worst part? The tags make it clear who's doing it.
• Fatal Flaw: Wrath. Amber has poor anger management issues and generally tries to solve problems by attacking or threatening whoever's causing them. Much of her character arc in the first ten books is dedicated towards her finding healthier outlets for her aggressive tendencies.
• Gamer Chick: Favors handheld games, such as Mario Kart DS and Pokémon GO.
• The Glasses Come Off: Deconstructed after Those Who Ground Me. She broke her glasses...but since she has astigmatism, this means she can't look at a computer without giving herself a headache. This is obviously a problem for someone who games as much as Amber.
• Gone Horribly Right: Amber decided to become Amazi-Girl to have a relatively harmless outlet for her anger issues. Then she started to have trouble figuring out which version of herself was the one with the rage.
• Helpful Hallucination: Some 2020 strips have her hallucinate Mike. The hallucination ends up saying 'mean-yet-correct' things to get her out of her funk.
• Heroic BSoD: Suffers several: First when Ethan was taken hostage, she ended up paralyzed in fear. Years later, when she stands up to her father, she punches him in the face but quickly realizes as she flees that she enjoyed it way too much. Finally, when Blaine takes Danny hostage to lure her out of campus, it causes her to enter a vicious rage and led her to exert Extreme Mêlée Revenge. In the aftermath of the event, she completely shuts down.
• Hope Spot: Amber slowly begins making strides to get better, even trying to interact with Sal through Mario Kart, only to bear witness to Rachel tell Ruth that redemption doesn't exist and people don't change, then be "dumped" by Dorothy so Dorothy can catch up on her studies, and topped off by being confronted by Ryan. Naturally, this causes her to snap.
• Hypocrite: Sal terrified Amber with a knife—Amber actually stabbed Sal in return, and after she'd already been arrested by the police. Yet Amber sees Sal as the dangerous one. She gets this thrown back in her face when she confronts Sal and her friends in a parking lot.
• I Let Gwen Stacy Die: Amber blames herself for Mike's Death. Even referencing this trope word for word.
• I Am a Monster: Considers herself a monster after stabbing Ryan.
• Incompatible Orientation: With Ethan, as he's gay while she's a straight woman.
• Inspector Javert: Due to the PTSD she suffered from encountering Sal at the convenience store, she subconsciously demonizes her so that she can maintain a semblance of moral superiority. Upon seeing that the real Sal is nothing like the one of her nightmares, she has difficulty reconciling the two, blaming Sal for many of the misfortunes she begins suffering after enrolling. She, fortunately, manages to try and bridge the gap by playing Mario Kart with her, and after the two manage to finally sit down and talk, they sort of become friends.
• In the Blood: Amber's father Blaine is a violent jerkass who beat her mother repeatedly. When she finally stands up to him, she ends up punching him in the face. What could have been seen as a moment of awesome quickly devolves into a much more disturbing thing when Amber remembers her emotions at the time: when she punched her father, she was smiling. When she realizes that she enjoyed hurting someone, even if the person she hurt really deserved it, she gets a Heroic BSoD, because that would make her not so different from her father.
• It's All About Me: Amber has some major self-worth issues, and can react poorly to perceived disrespect from people she cares about. While she recognizes that these are bad impulses, they only serve to deepen her view of herself as innately flawed and broken. For instance:
  • When Ethan decides to retreat back into the closet and start dating Joyce, Amber throws a fit because she takes it personally that Ethan couldn't fake straightness with her while he's doing so with Joyce, then a virtual stranger, while she and Ethan have been friends since childhood.
  • When Danny starts questioning Amber's attitudes towards Sal and decision to put herself in danger, Amber feels that she's being turned on and chews Danny out.
• Knight Templar: While normally Amazi-Girl is The Cape, she devolves into this when dealing with Sal, claiming that Sal stole her dignity, Amber's sanity, and now their Danny. It reaches the point where she begins stalking her in the hopes of catching her off-guard.
• Large Ham:
  • Amber enjoys the theatrics of superheroing—appearing out of nowhere, doing cool-looking acrobatics moves, dropping one-liners, and saying her name like a logo. While this is occasionally helpful in melee fights and intimidating perps, it tends to be overkill when dealing with vandals and litterers.
  • She can be like this in Amber mode too, like when Ethan and Mike (but mostly Mike) drag her away from her laptop.
    Amber: NO! NOOO! YOU'RE NOT MY MOM! YOU'RE NOT MY MOM! It's not fair! There was time now! There was all the time I needed! It's not faaaaiiiirrr!
• Last Het Romance: Was Ethan's, who figured out he was gay right when they were about to have sex for the first time.
• Le Parkour: The action sequence starting here shows Amazi-Girl pulling off some impressive physical feats.
• Loves My Alter Ego: She ends up in a Two-Person Love Triangle with Danny, though she does eventually have to come clean about her secret identity after Blaine kidnaps Danny.
• Mistaken Identity: Danny immediately becomes attracted to Amber when he first meets her. However, Amazi-Girl is depicted in such a way that she could have a lot of hair, and her modus operandi is very similar to that of Batman. You know who else has a lot of hair and resembles Batman? Sal, who was Danny's First Love in Roomies!.
• Pintsized Powerhouse: She's 5'5" in her superhero boots, is one of the shorter characters in the webcomic, and is one of the best physical fighters.
• Pre-Asskicking One-Liner: "Never again".
• Rage Breaking Point:
  • After being unable to help your only friend, your father only further twists the knife by telling you how useless and cowardly you are (despite the fact that the robber was armed with a freakin' knife). This is the point where poor, broken Amber completely snaps, grabbing the knife from the police officer and stabbing the restrained Sal through the hand, leaving lasting damage and a scar.
  • Almost suffers another one after Danny kisses her in public. As it's widely known that he's dating Amazi-Girl and not the "civilian" Amber, they previously agree that he only treats her as a friend to protect her hero secret identity. This angers her so much that she swears at him, almost calls him some very nasty things, and claims that while she needs him, she needs Amazi-Girl much more, ending their relationship on the spot.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Her eyes are red when she stabs Sal in her flashback of the robbery incident.
• The Reveal: When Amazi-Girl was introduced into the strip, she was largely treated as a mystery... despite Amber, her "civilian" identity in Shortpacked!, appearing not long after. Fortunately, Willis still had cards up his sleeve, and Amber's motivation for donning her mask and cape are very different than they are in the mainline continuity.
  Danny: Oh my god. Are you... Amber under there?
  [beat]
  Amber:...I don't know.
• Roaring Rampage of Rescue: So, your father kidnaps your boyfriend in order to use it as leverage over you? Bad idea, Blaine, as it leads to Amber dealing him a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown.
• Sanity Slippage: After seeing Rachel give Ruth a scathing "The Reason You Suck" Speech about how people don't change and can't redeem themselves, then Dorothy having to separate herself from Amazi-Girl to focus on studies, topped off by Ryan attacking them with a knife, Amber finally snaps and fully succumbs to her darker side. Fortunately for her, it's aimed at Ryan.
• Save the Villain: She keeps Ross from falling out of a moving car, even though he tried to kill her just seconds prior.
• Secret Identity: She's Amazi-Girl.
• Shrinking Violet: Was very shy during her childhood, but managed to grow out of it and is now more reserved.
• Slasher Smile: When she reaches her breaking point, she tends to give out incredibly unsettling smiles. Two targets being Blaine himself, and a truly horrifying one to Ryan, right before she attacks him with his own knife.
• Split Personality:
  • The tags consider Amber and Amazi-Girl two separate people. Amber herself originally thinks of Amazi-Girl as just a mask she puts on, but as time passes she starts acting as though both of them are personas. It's eventually exacerbated to the point where Amazi-Girl and Amber seem to now consider each other fully distinct.
    Amazi-Girl: First she took her sanity, then she took my dignity and now she's taken our Danny.
  • In Book Ten, their relationship briefly becomes adversarial, with Amazi-Girl keeping memories from Amber and Amber depriving herself of sleep to starve Amazi-Girl out. It takes Joyce trying to contextualize them as a single, flawed human being for them to reconcile and try to strike a healthy balance.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: After Blaine says he's almost proud of her and should've recognized "his handiwork sooner", Amber has this to say before turning her back on him for the last time.
  Amber: "I made me."
• Stalker without a Crush: As her Inspector Javert tendencies worsen, she begins flat-out stalking Sal to see if she's up to something.
• Stealth Hi/Bye: Not even the Alt Text is sure how she did it while halfway between outfits.
• Superheroes Wear Capes: As Amazi-Girl, she always wears a long blue cape.
  Dorothy: It never gets in your way?
  Amazi-Girl: It's very important psychologically. Adds ten bravery points. Any six-year-old knows that.
• Superpowered Evil Side: Subverted. She originally became Amazi-Girl as an outlet for her anger issues, but as her Split Personality worsens, it's Amber's breakdowns that cause the most damage.
• Third-Person Person: When masked as Amazi-Girl, she refers to Amber as a person outside herself. It's standard practice for this sort of thing - she averts …But He Sounds Handsome, and has some trouble keeping her lies straight - but it may or may not also be a sign of her unraveling identity. After Danny is taken hostage, she begins to refer to both personas in the third person more often, regardless of which one she's currently supposed to be.
• Trauma Button: Sal. Amber can't even look at her without suffering traumatic flashbacks, though Amazi-Girl can. After the two come to blows, Sal makes an effort to bury the hatchet, which Amber gradually acclimates to.
• Unstoppable Rage: Blaine kidnaps Danny. Amazi-Girl joins them and demands he release Danny. Blaine refuses. Serious ass-kicking ensues. She suffers a Post-Victory Collapse afterward, as it's not Amazi-Girl doing the ass-kicking and this doesn't sit well with her.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Gets this from Sal, who chews her out for escalating the situation with Becky's father and risking Becky's and her own safety. Sal even warns her that she needs to sort out her issues or else she'll come after her, completely unaware that she is one of Amber's issues.
• Yaoi Fangirl: Unashamedly and unrepentantly. She ships Tony/Steve and writes fanfic where, to borrow Joyce's words, "Superman and Batman are very good friends." She also pesters Ethan for details about his sex life after he finally comes out of the closet for real, something he seems irately resigned to.
• Your Approval Fills Me with Shame:
  • Her reaction when a DeSanto rally eggs her on into attacking Sal by assuming that Sal was up to something and Amazi-Girl's actions are justified is disgust.
  • After attacking Ryan as Amber, she has a hallucination of Blaine congratulating her on what she did to him. She is not pleased.
  • Blaine saying he's almost proud and should've recognized "his handiwork sooner" after she beats him for the last time and makes it unambiguously clear Amber and Amazi-Girl share the same body doesn't fill her heart with roses either.

Carla Rutten

"Here's the thing about me liking someone—either I'm nice to 'em, or I bug the everlovin' shit out of them forever and ever."

A single-room sophomore and part of Sal's new "posse". Carla wants people to know she exists; wanting them to like her is another matter.

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• Actual Pacifist: Ten years in, she's one of increasingly few lady characters to have never thrown a punch, and actively objects to getting involved during her first, last, and only fight scene. She "prefers to assert [her] dominance via sweet pranks" as opposed to violence, and her revenge against Mary involves only those and a Paranoia Gambit—in contrast to Billie and Ruth, who've each physically assaulted Mary at least once.
• Actually Pretty Funny: Initially declares the activities of the Whiteboard Ding-Dong Bandit to be a hate crime, but once it's clear that it struck everyone and just not her, she thinks it's hilarious.
• Adaptational Nice Girl: She's much less of a callous prankster than she was in the original continuity, only truly going after people who truly cross her, and even then only with embarrassing pranks.
• Adaptation Species Change: In Shortpacked!, Ultra Car was a sentient robot car with a male voice that created a human chassis in the form of a red-haired Robot Girl. Here, Carla is a transgender female human that modeled herself after the Ultra Car character.
• Adaptational Romance Downgrade: Downplayed, she and Malaya aren't together like they are in Shortpacked!, but she does have a bit of a crush on them.
• Bad Liar: She can tell lies with a straight face, but they're so transparent that she's generally called on it immediately. Granted, she seldom seems to care whether anyone believes her or not—unless, of course, she's accused of caring about other people.
• Berserk Button:
  • Unsurprisingly considering who she's patterned after, insulting Ultra Car. Walky stomps on it pretty hard.
  • Invoking the Armoured Closet Gay trope as an excuse for bigoted behavior is also a pretty good way to get her hackles up, as Billie and Ruth learn while speculating on whether or not Mary has a crush on her and is being transphobic to allay suspicions on her sexuality.
• Cannot Keep a Secret: Or rather, just doesn't want to, going for the quickest possible resolution when Ruth is suicidal, and blowing up Sal and Marcie's Operation: Jealousy for her own amusement.
• Changed My Mind, Kid: Carla really hates her selfless side, but she always comes back if she's well and truly needed.
• Decomposite Character: In a sense. Ultra Car is an in-universe cartoon character, who Carla has patterned herself on.
• Everyone Has Standards: Will happily irritate the shit out of anyone and everyone, but draws the line at acts of violence.
• Flipping the Bird: She flips her middle finger at people a lot as an act of defiance or to screw with them.
• Foil: To fellow trans woman Jocelyne:
  • Carla is openly trans, fully accepted by her parents, and generally in-your-face, while Jocelyne remains closeted because she's terrified of how her fundamentalist family might react - she remains "accepted" at the cost of constant secret-keeping.
  • Carla enjoys getting a rise out of annoying people, while Jocelyne is more inclined to play peacemaker.
  • Carla's parents run a technology company and she knows her way around a welding torch, while Jocelyne is an English major and Starving Artist.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Well, within the confines of the setting, anyway. Her spring-loaded pies and Joyce's milkjug stilts^note to deal with Joyce's numerous neuroses surrounding the filthy floor of the shared showers are probably possible, but unlikely to be built by the average 19-year-old.
• Good Parents: In stark contrast to the many, many bigoted parents in the comic, Carla's folks spent a lot of money on lawyers to keep anti-trans laws off the books in Indiana. They also built her custom toys when she was young after her favorite show got canned without ever producing merch. As a result, her parents are some of the only people she'll openly and sincerely admit to liking, and threatening to tell them about her behavior is one of the only ways shown to make her actually stop.
  Carla: Liking my parents makes me the cool rebel, if you think about it. I'm doing 4D chess on y'all.
• Hidden Depths:
  • Tells Ruth that she's used to being everyone's acceptable loss after Mary misgenders her and Ruth fails to stand up for her.
  • And you'd better watch out if you get her mad. That's a lot of chaotic energy to get directed your way there, Mary...
• Iconic Item: Is seldom seen without rollerskates on, even indoors—despite frequent reminders that she's not actually allowed to skate in the dorms.
• It's All About Me: Carla's got a very self-focused world view, for example, she automatically assumes that some cookies of Billie's are automatically hers.
• I Love You Because I Can't Control You: In a weird way: Carla develops a slightly childish interest in Charlie, Booster's twin sister, because Charlie is the one person who (thanks to being extremely spacy) is capable of genuinely ignoring her.
• The Lad-ette: She has a fondness for rollerblading and engineering, favors athletic wear, and always has to be the most obnoxious person in the room.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Her storyline in Book Six has her antagonism with Mary reach a boiling point, and Mary misgendering her in response. With Ruth asks if it would be so bad to tone it down, Carla points out that damn near everyone on the floor is kind of an asshole, that she has as much of a right to it as anyone, and that she shouldn't need to be perfect for her gender to be respected.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Carla deliberately and actively cultivates an image as a loud, obnoxious jerk who's impossible to ignore and does whatever the fuck she wants. That said, it's trivially easy to get her to help a floormate in need or generally do the right thing—though she's likely to contrive a reason why taking this action still qualifies her as a loud, obnoxious jerk.
• Not What I Signed on For: She agrees to be a go-between for Billie and Ruth, unaware of how badly depressed Ruth is. Then she realizes she's basically being used as a suicide watch.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Carla's default state is loud, in-your-face, and unapologetic. All of this goes out the window when Mary calls her a boy. All the energy goes out of her on the spot.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: After Mary purposely misgenders her, Carla takes revenge through a sustained prank war and taking advantage of Mary's paranoia.
• Significant Anagram: Ultra Car...ten? Net?
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: She didn't fix Joyce's jug shoes to be nice, she did it to prove her superiority.
• Trans Tribulations: Carla is a trans woman, first confirmed by Word of God and then alluded to in the comic itself. It was only explicitly stated in-strip after Mary verbally assaulted her by stating that she didn't belong in the girls' wing of her dorm.
• Unknown Rival: With "fellow agitator" Mike in a trilogy of Patreon bonus comics.
• Unrelated in the Adaptation: As a robot car-turned-android, she was created by Rachel Jackson and Joe in the original continuity, who served as her surrogate parents. Here they are just her classmates who have no connection to her, and her parents are yet unseen.

Dina Saruyama

"Do others see me as... strange?"

Amber's roommate, Dina is an expert on all things dinosaurs. Her knowledge about human behavior, on the other hand...

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• Adaptational Angst Downgrade: Unlike It's Walky!, she's not under pressure to save the world from aliens, and never develops a crippling inferiority complex due to her job gradually being overtaken by others. She's now one of the more self-confident and well-adjusted of the cast.
• Adaptational Name Change: Her Walkyverse incarnation had the last name "Sarazu"; Willis changed it because "[it] was too made up".
• Adaptational Romance Downgrade:
  • In the Walkyverse she and Walky dated for a time, but here neither has expressed any sort of romantic or sexual attraction towards each other.
  • She and Mike not only never date but don't really interact directly with each other past sharing space in some strips.
• Adaptational Nice Girl: In this reality, she didn't make Mike drunk against his will to start a relationship with him.
• A Day in the Limelight: Is the star of the "Walking with Dina" storyline, which also includes a lot of her inner monologue. She is also the co-start of the "Trial and Sarah" storyline with Becky
• Ambiguously Bi: Aside from being canonically Asexual, she says that despite her relationship with a woman that she doesn't like to put a label on her sexual preference, implying she is open to other genders.
• Antiquated Linguistics: As pointed out by Sarah, Dina normally does not use contractions.
• Ascended Extra: She's seen in the background of several panels before she's formally introduced. Readers of It's Walky! picked her out immediately, of course, but to newcomers, she would seem to have evolved out of the woodwork.
• Asian and Nerdy: Her knowledge of dinosaurs and evolution combined with being of Japanese descent makes her this.
• Beneath Notice: Early in the comic, Dina doesn't have many friends and is reluctant to draw attention to herself. This made it funny when characters would fail to notice her, making it seem as she had suddenly appeared in the scene when she spoke up. Not only did this gag stick around as Dina became more outgoing and social, but it became a bona fide superpower, allowing her to sneak into restricted areas and spy on other characters with impunity. That said, her earlier character traits are still implied to be the root cause—it doesn't work when Dina's loud, flamboyant girlfriend tries it.
• Berserk Button: Questioning scientific evolution or generally involving her in magical thinking is a good way to set her off. She also doesn't take kindly to being called a child, though that's an issue that keeps her at more of a low simmering rage.
• Crazy-Prepared: She carries a rubber ring in her backpack.
• Foil: To Becky and Joyce, as far as their upbringing and education goes - they were raised by abusive fundamentalists and fed creationist propaganda, which clashes with Dina's comparatively normal upbringing and dediciation to scientific knowledge. Post-timeskip, Dina's a foil to Joyce in a different way: both are atheists, but Joyce is more bitter and willing to argue with Becky about it, while Dina is mostly respectful of her girlfriend's faith, innocent insensitivity notwithstanding.
• Geeky Turn-On: Rarely demonstrates arousal, but Becky expressing interest in dinosaurs or science in general tends to do it for her.Becky and her being called "lab partners" by Joe is the moment she has enough "pants euphoria" to have sex with Becky
• Hidden Depths: One would probably not expect Dina to be the more sexually-dominant one in her and Becky's relationship, and yet...
• Hollywood Atheist: Downplayed but still present: she's science-minded to the point of willing to argue with creationist talking points, and openly refers to God as a fictional character, though out of No Social Skills rather than militiant atheism.
• Iconic Item: Her hat, which was later Defictionalized as official merch.
• Meaningful Name: Dina Saruyama. This has caused some confusion over the pronunciation of her given name (it's DEE-na.)
• Never Bareheaded:
  • Never seen without some dinosaur-themed headgear. A bonus strip shows that she puts a showercap on over her dinosaur hat.
    Rachel: That hat's going to come off someday, and I'm gonna see it.
  • Becky develops something of a fetish for seeing the top of Dina's head, and embarks on a determined quest to finally get her to take the hat off. This is a result of her religious upbringing drilling it into her head that all sexy parts must always be covered up, which has tricked her brain into thinking any part of the body that's always covered up must automatically be sexy.
    Becky: Joyce, I'm crackin' up. I've been havin' sexy dreams 'bout scalps, man. It ain't right. It ain't right.
  • She does take off her hat for two strips to satisfy Becky's curiosity.
  • She keeps her hat on even while having sex with Becky. However, she does remove her hat to turn on Becky.
• Nice Girl: Even with her having No Social Skills, she is still a nice person who cares about others.
• No Social Skills: As she puts it below:
  Dina: I've never been able to understand people. But dinosaurs are extinct. They're fixed in time, letting me learn about them without them changing constantly before my eyes.
• Not So Stoic:
  • Dina started the comic with fairly static facial expressions, and gained more nuanced (but still understated) ones as the comic went on. That said, she's perfectly capable of going ham when the situation calls for it, especially when Becky, Sarah, or science is involved.
  • Joyce making derisive comments at her because of her supposed "robot-girl" nature leads to one of the few instances in the comic where she is visibly annoyed. She then leaves Joyce's room, calling her an asshole on her way out.
• Odd Friendship: Appreciates Sarah's companionship because of her "directness". Meanwhile, Dina's non-judgemental personality and quiet, low-maintenance demeanor make her a good match for Sarah's antisocial behavior.
• Older Than They Look: Dina is small, and generally regarded as childlike, which means much of the cast is stunned to find she's turning 19 before any of them. It's later revealed that she ended up repeating 3rd grade, implying that being held back a year may be the cause. Lampshaded when Raidah and her friends think she's a child, and later after she makes friends with Riley.
  Amber: "Dina, I think she's like twelve."
  Dina: "I have been deceived!"
  Riley: "Wait, you're not twelve?"
  Dina: "I see no answer to that which would not tarnish my dignity."
• Only Sane by Comparison: Dina is an implied undiagnosed autistic with No Social Skills who is more interested in dinosaurs than people. She also had a comparatively angst-free childhood and ends up playing the Only Sane Man to multiple more troubled characters, most notably Becky, Amber, Joyce and (sometimes, but not always) Sarah.
• Precision F-Strike:
  • After the first confrontation with Ross, she notes that Joyce doesn't use "Fuck" or "Shit" despite starting to say "Goddamn" a lot. The others are surprised that she can even swear, considering how formally she usually speaks.
  • Delivers one to Joyce after the latter disrespects her:
  Dina: "Spanking might not have turned you into a criminal, Joyce, but there may be a correlation with you being an asshole."
• Queer Colors:
  • In two strips she's wearing the ace colors on a primarily grey shirt, flagging her as grey-asexual.
  • In another strip, she wears purple and white sneakers, two colors of the ace flag.
• The Quiet One: Unless you get her talking about dinosaurs. Her parents are also laconic.
  Sarah: If your Thanksgivings are this quiet, I'm available for adoption.
• Relationship Upgrade: Ends up dating Becky.
• Secret Secret-Keeper: Knew Amber was Amazi-Girl without her knowledge, somehow.
• Shrinking Violet: Averted, in contrast to Amber's straight example. Dina wants to be social and outgoing, she's just not good at it, which early in the comic results in her being overlooked and ignored. Dina looks to Amber to model good socializing for her, the irony of which is not lost on Amber.
• Socially Awkward Hero: Has difficulty navigating social mores.
• Stealth Hi/Bye: From the perspective of the other characters, anyway. "Blink your eyes and she'll be there." She is also able to weaponise this to make suprise attack.
• The Stoic: More often than not, Dina's emotions are rather tame and she, initially, doesn't talk much.
• Tagalong Kid: Takes this role in a lot of social groups. By which we mean that the social groups accidentally pick her up and carry her along.
• Taught by Experience: When Amber's Archnemesis Dad appears, Dina makes the mistake of helping him locate her. When Becky's Archnemesis Dad appears, she has learned from her error and sends him on a wild goose chase.
• Their First Time: She and Becky are both virgins have sex for the first time in Book 12.
• The Unsmile: When she tries an artificial smile, the results aren't pretty.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Cereal.
• Unfazed Everyman: Dina has no frame of reference for "normal" behavior, and thus often underreacts to other characters' strangeness. When she does notice something's off, she tends to assume others are deliberately acting strange to make her feel comfortable.
• Weirdness Magnet: Tends to get dragged along (sometimes literally) by the other characters' plans.
• When She Smiles: Due to her stoic and reserved behaviour, Dina very rarely smiles. But when she does, it's adorable.

Dorothy Margot Keener

"Incorporating a regulated amount of fun is an important component of mental health!"

Dorothy is a career woman aiming towards Yale and then politics. Too bad real life keeps getting in the way. She rooms with Sierra in the fall semester, before rooming with Becky in the spring.

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• The Ace: Keeps her grades up, exercises regularly, has a healthy family life, is perfectly friendly in almost every situation, and is ready to help her friends at a moment's notice. If it's possible to be The Ace of a slice of life comic, Dorothy is it—though her workaholism and endless plate-spinning occasionally threaten to tip her into Broken Ace territory.
• Broken Ace: Post-timeskip despite her numerous virtues she finds herself falling into an existential crisis and starting to spiral after a pointed critique from Raidah about her career choice as President, coupled with her PTSD from the kidnapping.
• Ambition Is Evil: Inverted. Dorothy plans to be President of the United States, and neither the other characters nor the comic itself judge her for that. That said, Dorothy is always on guard for such a critique.
• Amicable Exes: Really wants to be this with Walky. Walky doesn't hold any ill-will over the breakup, but he's initially miserable enough about it to be unreceptive to her stabs at friendship.
• Do Wrong, Right: She warns Walky not to kick his shoe down the corridor, only to be so unimpressed with his attempt she shows him how it's done herself.
• Geeky Turn-On: Has been known to experience an "intoxicating rush of productivity" after sex, and keeps details of her sex life organized in a spreadsheet.
• Hidden Disdain Reveal: Book 13 reveals that despite going to high-school with Joe, she actually hates him and only put up him with him back then because he and Danny were a package deal. She even claims that one of the perks of dumping Danny was not having to deal with him anymore... until discovering that he was in her Gender Studies class as well.
• Hollywood Atheist: Subverted. She was raised areligiously, and eventually decided that she didn't see a need to believe in a higher power.
• Intrepid Reporter: Works for the college newspaper. Covers the Amazi-Girl beat.
• I Just Want to Have Friends: To a much lesser extent than some of the other characters here, but she keeps finding herself distracted from her pre-law studies by, well, having a social life.
• Meaningful Name: She takes her studies seriously; i.e. she's a keener. Word of God says that this was a total accident.
• Not So Above It All: She gets along surprisingly well with the screwballs that comprise the main cast despite being one of the more well-adjusted characters.
• Obsessed Are the Listmakers: She is very dependent on lists, schedules and spreadsheets. In one Paetron strip, Becky knocks her schedule out of her hand to show she can't plan for everything, and then notices the next item on the schedule is "Becky knocks schedule out of my hand".
• Only Sane Man: Dorothy is easily the best adjusted of the main cast, if a little uptight about it. Consequently, she's a foil and friend to Joyce.
• Serious Business: Takes thank you notes very seriously, as Walky learns.
• Shipping Torpedo: She does not approve of Joyce and Joe's blossoming romance, and tries to dissuade each of them from pursuing it.
• Uptight Loves Wild: Her romance with Walky is a subdued version.
• Weakness Turns Her On: Despite at times being embarrassed by him, Dorothy definitely enjoys Walky's juvenile and submissive personality while they're dating. The feeling goes both ways...
• What the Hell, Hero?: She's rather dismayed when she realizes Joyce is trying to break up Jacob and Raidah for selfish reasons.
  • She also expresses disappointment when she witnesses the newly-atheist Joyce badmouthing Christianity behind Becky's back...and then accidentally in front of her.
• Workaholic: Part of Dorothy is convinced she can handle anything if she just schedules it properly and works hard. She ends up taking on far too many responsibilities and starts skipping meals before realizing she needs to slow down.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Dorothy wants to be President some day but is not enough of a people person to be any good at politics, as she quickly learns when she goes up against the extroverted Roz in her campaign to become the next RA.

Jennifer Yunru "Billie" Billingsworth

See Other Students

Joyce Hannah Brown

"I think we should give everybody a chance before we write them off. Even the bad people. I admit sometimes I'm not very good at it, but I feel I at least need to try."

The closest to a protagonist in this comic, Joyce is a naïve homeschooled young woman about to get the culture shock(s) of her life. She ends up rooming with Sarah.

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• Achey Scars: Fending off her attempted rapist by smashing a glass in his face leaves a scar on her hand which, while it lasts, tends to get attention from Joyce in times of stress (often, but not always, when reminded of the incident.)
• Adaptational Relationship Overhaul: In the Walkyverse she and Joe are only close friends, but here they become a couple post-Book 10.
• Adaptational Romance Downgrade:
  • In the Walkyverse she and Walky are an Official Couple, whereas here they could barely be considered friends and at times actively dislike one another, held together only by their mutual (girl)friend Dorothy.
  • She was Danny's Stalker with a Crush in the original Roomies!, while here it's an outright Running Gag that she doesn't know or care who he is, outside of "Joe's roommate, who wears a hat now".
• All-Loving Heroine: What prevents her Christian fundamentalist ideology from making her unlikable prior to her disillusionment with and eventual break from the Church and Christianity. She may believe that all her friends are going to Hell and that homosexuality can be fixed, but she loves and cares about them enough to believe the best of everyone, and with time accept them as they are.
• Ambiguously Bi: Has cropped up a number of times throughout the comic's run:
  • Joyce's initial idolization of Sal to her overt friendliness with Dorothy comes off as not exactly platonic, especially when combined with her jealousy of Walky for being the latter's boyfriend and therefore getting a lot of her attention, but this gets chalked up (by Joyce herself) to having her view of female friendships skewed by her relationship with Becky (who was a closeted lesbian pining for her for most of their friendship). Other characters remain unconvinced, however, such as Lucy referring to Joyce as "a kinda bisexual version of [her]."
  • Crops up again starting from Book 11 when Joyce applies to have her comic strip added to the campus newspaper and Daisy pointedly comments that from reading it she felt the two female leads (who have been explicitly described as fictional self inserts of Joyce and Dorothy) had so much more romantic chemistry than the intended (male) love interest that Daisy flat out says it could be seen as "queerbaiting," (and Joyce is visibly uncomfortable and unsure of how to respond).
  • The ambiguity regarding her feelings for Dorothy crops up again as the two of them continue to grow closer, with events such as her getting very interested into their fake relationship cover for Joyce to get her birth control pills or her homoerotic dreams of her, culminating in Dorothy teaching Joyce how to masturbate, complete with handholding.
    Joyce: It wasn't as gay as it sounded.
    Sarah: It honestly couldn't be.
• Arbitrary Skepticism: As befitting someone raised fundamentalist Christian and anti-science, Joyce believes a lot of things that sound bonkers to others completely uncritically, while rejecting facts and logic because they don't fit her worldview.
• Author Avatar:
  • Joyce's time as an evangelical Christian, the beliefs that were instilled in her, and her eventual humanism-motivated change in prospective are all drawn from Willis's real life.
  • In Book 11 she starts wearing glasses much like Willis does, though she's just nearsighted as opposed to his astigmatism because it would've taken too long for her to get glasses on time within the webcomic's timeframe.
  • Book 11 also has her compete with Walky to post a comic in the campus newspaper, and the parallels between what she wants to do and Willis' own works are clear. In the first strip we see, she even draws in a way reminiscent of Willis' style back when he was doing Roomies!.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: She finds the thought of life long best friends, like Walky and Billie, falling in love with each other incredibly romantic. Three months later in real world time, or a few hours in comic time, Becky confesses to her.
• The Beard: Pursued a Fake Relationship with Ethan after he came out as gay to her, although she was aware of it and the two agree to a rather ill-advised "relationship". However, after Becky's Coming-Out Story, Joyce breaks up with Ethan in "Goodbye, my friend."
• Berserk Button: The fact that All Men Are Perverts.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Joyce is aggressively bubbly, naive, and friendly. If you threaten her or her friends, however, she's just aggressive:
  • When drugged and being threatened with sexual violence, she breaks a glass on the assailant's face, leaving a nasty scar.
  • Once she confronts Ross MacIntyre after he attempted to kidnap Becky, she ends up knocking him out with a punch hard enough to damage her wrist.
  • When Amber stabs Ryan half to death, Joyce flat-out says she wishes she had killed him. Amber admits it wasn't for lack of trying on her part.
  • When talking to Ross during the kidnapping she makes it very clear that she isn't buying his excuses. She doesn't get an opportunity to fight him since Blaine has murdered him by the time she frees herself.
    Ross: Sometimes, Joyce... God chooses to enact his perfect will through an imperfect angel.
    Joyce: I'll keep that in mind when I put my goddammned foot through your face.
• Break the Cutie: Joyce was raised in an environment with a strict code of ethics, minimal exposure to anyone different from her, and basically no access to pop culture. Early on, some of the more cynical characters in the cast assume that simply being exposed to the real world will be enough to shatter Joyce's chipper demeanor like a baseball through a window. Turns out, she's tougher than she looks—but the comic throws more serious trauma at Joyce as well, and she can't weather violent encounters with rapists and bigots without developing a cynical, angry side. "Broken" might be a strong word, but she's definitely changed.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: Joyce starts having overtones of this when Dorothy began dating Walky and she starts getting jealous, something that has not gone unnoticed by the fans. Or by Walky.
• Closet Key: For Becky, as she was the first girl Becky crushed on.
• Cornered Rattlesnake: The meek little churchmouse will bite back when threatened. Ask Ryan, who ends up picking glass shards from his face, or Ross, knocked out with a single wrist-damaging punch.
• Crisis of Faith: After becoming disillusioned with her family and her religion, Joyce post-timeskip doesn't really consider herself Christian anymore.
• Culturally Religious: Downplayed. As of Book 11, she's broken from her religious upbringing hard, but still habitually goes on with judging others' sex lives and is terrified she'll be judged similarly for going on birth control.
• Death Glare: Joyce is very prone to giving death glares, both for comedic but also dramatic purposes:
  • Breaks out one when Sarah tries to give her a $20 for successfully swearing.
  • When her mom is making mean remarks to Becky during diner, Joyce barely contains her anger, grinding her teeth at her.
  • When John, her brother, makes insensitive remarks and completly belittles Becky, she gives him a death glare and outright tells him he should watch his words. Shortly after, she snaps for the first time against a family member.
• Delayed Diagnosis: In the June 7, 2022 strip, Joyce Brown was given a referral by a doctor to get diagnosed for autism due to various seemingly autistic traits - rambling, frequently discussing the same topics, being bad with personal or social boundaries, and being a picky eater. Joyce herself is skeptical, on the basis that a lot of it can be chalked up to her upbringing.
• Determinator: Sarah basically describes Joyce as fitting this trope due to her relentless nature when it comes to meeting her goals.
  Sarah: I don't mean any of that as a compliment, by the way. It is actually quite annoying.
• Dissonant Serenity: She frequently mentions the more disturbing parts of her fundamentalist worldview in the same cheery, sunny tone as everything else.
  Walky: I'm startin' to think your superpower is being able to say the scariest, most messed-up crap while somehow thinkin' it sounds fantastic.
• Dresses the Same: She and Dorothy tend to dress in very similar ways, as shown in this strip here when they end up picking out basically the same outfit to go to church save for having different colored sweaters.
  Dorothy: I'm going to go change.
  Joyce: No no no this is awesome.
• Establishing Character Moment: Becky's last words to her at the start of Book 1—"Just don't let anyone change you, okay?"—sets in motion Joyce's arc of struggling as the world proves itself more complicated than she feels equipped to handle.
• Evil Stole My Faith: The number of awful and egregious things Joyce sees done by family members and members of her old community over the course of the first ten books lead her to lose her faith in God and the church by the beginning of Book Eleven. This is in contrast to Becky, who sees the fact that she weathered those storms as proof that God likes her, regardless of what His other followers think.
• Failed a Spot Check: She feels the need to ask Mary if there's anyone she likes...interrupting her make-out session with a boy in the process.
• The Fundamentalist: Subverted, and more so with time. Subscribes to quite strict interpretations of The Bible, but obviously tries to err on the side of inclusion and friendship. Ultimately, as inclusion and friendship begin to seem more incompatible with the Bible, she finds herself beginning to abandon her faith. By Book 10, she no longer believes in the Bible and becomes an atheist.
  Joyce: That's what the Son of God says. He is my higher authority, my moral foundation.
• Give Me a Sign: Feeling insecure about her "relationship" with Ethan (she's volunteered to be his beard and help make him straight) compared to those she sees around her, Joyce asks God for some kind of sign. Becky, her lifelong best friend, promptly turns up...and confesses that she's in love with her.
• Gosh Dang It to Heck!:
  • She doesn't swear. Ever. From a later strip, Joyce tries to tell Joe off:
    Joyce: It'd better be, or I will fudge you up so dang hard everyone'll call you 'poopieface' 'cuz your head'll be stuffed up your own a-hole!
    [everybody giggles]
    Joyce: ...you all know what I meant.
  • After Becky's father kidnaps her at gunpoint, she snaps and begins using "damn", "goddamn", "hell", and "asshole". "Shit" has been edging itself in there as well.
• Hair Color Dissonance: Her hair is meant to be dark blonde, but it is often mistaken for a light brown.
• Heal the Cutie: Despite the crap hurled her way, Joyce remains capable of being the bubbly, chipper character we meet back in Book One. Her first violent encounter with Ross leaves her with a prolonged period of simmering anger, panicking her friends, but she returns from a weekend trip home with some encouragement from Hank and Jocelyne, ready to face the world again. She continues to have moments of anger and sadness afterwards, but for most of the comic, she's a person like anyone, with good days, bad days, and reasonable and situational gradients in demeanor.
• Heroic BSoD: She develops agoraphobia after her Book One encounter with date rapist Ryan, and starts to break down if she finds herself alone in public spaces. By Book Eight however she's made progress taking short trips on her own with no issue, and it remains to be seen if this is still a problem post-Book Ten.
• Hollywood Atheist: After becoming an atheist post-Book 10, Joyce makes it clear that she believes religious belief is dumb, mocks those who still believe, and is unapologetic about it, to the in-universe displeasure of most of her friends who aren't pleased about her sudden change in character.
• Horrible Judge of Character: Played for Drama with her Date Rape Averted, but Played for Laughs when she sends Becky out to invite Mike to her dorm party.
  Becky: Joyce is having a party, and she says you're invited if you can be nice.
  (Beat)
  (Beat)
  (Beat)
  Becky: Well?
  Mike: Are you not hearing the laughter?
• I Just Want to Have Friends: She throws herself into the college social scene with abandon.
• Incompatible Orientation: Joyce spends a stretch of time dating Ethan, who is gay. At first, Ethan is trying to remain closeted, but Amber guilts him about stringing Joyce along...and then Joyce decides she'll help make Ethan straight by continuing to date him. Ultimately Joyce sees the error of her ways...after her best friend Becky comes out as gay, and has her own incompatible orientation issues crushing on Joyce.
• Informed Ability: Joyce is introduced as having been the "best socialized" in her homeschooling group, despite having no boundaries, no filter, and irritating the heck out of everyone around her. Becky, when she appears in Book Five, seems much more capable of interacting with people in normal and expected ways. Ross' comment in Book Ten would suggest that "best-socialized" was just a euphemism for "most obedient".
• Innocent Bigot:
  • Like the best examples of the trope, when others call her on her hypocrisy, she listens and tries to adjust herself.
  • That quote about moral foundations? It's when she defies her parents, who are trying to get her to end her friendship with the atheist Dorothy. Joyce exhibits both the frustrating and the inspirational qualities of devout Christianity, and for that reason, audiences don't always know what to make of her. (The key to understanding her is that she's plainly more "innocent" than "bigot", and is aware of it.)
• Innocent Blue Eyes: Joyce has colored eyes in a world where almost everyone else has black dots instead. Her father and Jocelyne share this trait, her mother and John don't.
• Innocent Inaccurate:
  • Due to her being (mostly) The Ingenue - taken to its extreme when Sarah comments that she doesn't need to date because she has "toys".
  • And while dating Ethan, everyone quips "Have you tried a strap-on?" when she mentions wearing something he'd like.
    Joyce: Everyone keeps saying that! Does anyone have one of these "strap-ons" I can borrow? I'm like a size six.
• Innocently Insensitive: Listing every single example would take ages, from referring to her Black roommate Sarah as "a novelty" back in Book One to wondering if Booster (they/them) "knows he looks like he's wearing lady makeup" in Book Eleven. Suffice to say that Joyce has slowly gotten better at knowing what questions to ask and what things not to say, but it's an imperfect process that tends to frustrate those around her.
  Joyce: I have questions, and concerns, but I also remember I am usually wrong, and so I will accept what you've told me at face value.
• In-Series Nickname: "Pre-marital hanky-panky" for, you know, fornication. Shared with her mainline-universe counterpart. (Plural? "Pre-marital hankies-panky"!)
• Jerkass Has a Point: While venting about her current grievances with Becky to Dorothy, she points out that nobody cares when Becky is being obnoxious, but immediately gang up on her when her newfound atheism goes to her head. Even though she's just deflecting blame over their fight, she makes a valid point that Becky has at large been a Karma Houdini for her own Jerkass moments, and that it isn't fair that she gets a pass while Joyce doesn't.
• Madonna-Whore Complex: Has a bad case of this; when she's prescribed birth control medicine for painful PMS, she refuses to fufill it because taking birth control pills for any reason makes her a "hussy."
• The Matchmaker: Tries getting Sarah and Jacob together, despite Jacob already having a girlfriend. This goes poorly, especially when she starts crushing on Jacob herself and starts her own romantic rivalry with Raidah that leads to basically no one getting what they wanted.
• Medal of Dishonor: Inverted. Joyce is pleased when she gets a zero on Joe's list of do-ability, because it means she is the only one he judged based on her personality instead of her looks.
• No Periods, Period: Book 12 has Joyce have a nasty period to the point that Sarah has to pick her up to get around. Becky tells everyone that this happens every couple of months and she will be better in a few days. Jennifer points out that this is in fact unusual and takes Joyce to the health center to help control it better. Joyce points out to Jennifer that she didn't think it was out of the ordinary due to her upbringing. She is given birth control by the doctor to help control it better.
• Odd Friendship: Practically collects these. Her friendly, bubbly demeanor contrasts her with asocial Sarah and aloof Sal; her caution and anxiety contrast her with impulsive Becky; her puritanical attitudes contrast her with sexpot Joe and party-girl Billie; and (for a time) her Christianity contrasted her with atheist Dorothy. Her archetypical girliness sets her so far apart from crass, slovenly Walky that she can't even stand him most of the time, despite hanging out with him constantly.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Becky's kidnapping in Book Six gives us the angriest, most assertive version of Joyce we'd seen up to that point, even managing to impress Sal with her directness and attitude. The same Joyce whose voice trembled standing up to her own parents now has the confidence to knock Ross off his feet with a haymaker. And, perhaps most notably, the swear filter comes off.
  Dorothy: Oh, jeez, Joyce, I've been so worried. I'm so, so relieved.
  Becky: Also Joyce totally swore!
  Joyce: I said "Dammit" a bunch.
  Dorothy: 'HOLY SHIT, ARE YOU OKAY?!
• Paralyzing Fear of Sexuality: On top of her general issues with considering pre-marital sex a sin while still very much having sexual desires, her encounter with Ryan has given her some sexual trauma to intermingle with it, as seen in the impressively trippy dream sequence starting here.
• Picky Eater: Can't have food touching, can't share food, can't have condiments, can't have toppings, and its practically a running gag at this point that most chicken fingers are too spicy for her and that she has to order them off the children's menu. John figures she would've died of starvation if she'd come to visit him in India, and Becky has been picking the pepperoni off her pizzas since they were little. Joe is baffled when he finds out Joyce prefers sprinkled donuts to plain, considering her pickiness in general.
  Joe: I have seen you try to pick the Rice Krispies out of a Rice Krispy treat.
• The Pollyanna: See the character quote. Sal lampshades it.
• Rage Breaking Point:
  • Joyce goes absolutely berserk after seeing her best friend, Becky, being kidnapped, and even goes as far as punching Becky's dad, successfully knocking him out.
  • She snaps at her brother John after he acts incredibly condescending towards Becky and her, yelling at him, all of her contained rage pouring out.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning:
  • Joyce's blue eyes turn to red after punching Ross, Becky's father. She's about to kick him while he's down until Becky stops her.
  • The red eyes make a return after John, Joyce's brother, keeps making insensitive comments about Becky's situation and acts patronizing. Joyce, after having heard enough, snaps:
    John: Just listen to yourself Joyce, you sound so angry. So bitter.
    Joyce: BECAUSE I AM!
• Sex Is Evil, and I Am Horny: Joyce lives in fear of so much as masturbating, let alone pre-marital hanky-panky, because in her theology everyone will know every shameful and amoral thing she did after the end times come, and most forms of sexual pleasure are sins. This doesn't prevent her from having sexual thoughts, but it does prevent her from admitting she has them—fairly transparently, to the exasperation of those around her.
  • In Book 13, she finally masturbates due to Dorothy's push to try and release her sexual thoughts about Joe. When Sarah confronts about it when she appears to be no longer a bundle of nerves, she hides under the covers, ashamed of what she did even though she no longer believes in God.
• She Cleans Up Nicely: Willis gives her the widest variety in clothing styles, as she tries out new things. They're still all really conservative, but even Joe reacted to her yellow dress.
  Joyce: What? Is anything wrong?
  Joe: Excuse me I've gotta go find a vest. And my eyebrows.
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man: Came to college explicitly to get her MRS Degree. All indications are that she has since backed off from this, though how much the good and bad experiences she's had so far have influenced this is unclear.
• Stranger in a Familiar Land: The longer Joyce stays in college, the less welcoming her home, family, and religion feel to her.
• To Be Lawful or Good: Initially, Joyce tries to reconcile the two, feeling strongly that the law (her religion) requires her to be good by accepting and loving all those around her. As the actual text of those laws, and the interpretations of her fellow followers, increasingly force her into a corner, she finds herself prioritizing good, laws be damned.
• Took a Level in Cynic: After her worldview is regularly challenged on a daily basis upon coming to the university and after suffering from several very traumatic events (including being a victim of attempted rape, witnessing the kidnapping of her best friend and getting threatened at gun point, getting kidnapped herself, coming to terms with the fact that one of her brothers and her mother are terrible people and her parents' subsequent divorce, and her faith crisis), Joyce has noticeably become more bitter and is more prone to negative mood swings compared to before.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Following the timeskip, after the kidnapping and her turning atheist, Joyce is seen rejecting everything she learned as a fundamentalist Christian. This eventually leads to a fight with Becky when the latter catches her being extremely dismissive towards her previous religion and people who follow it, while Becky still sees herself as a believer. Overall, Joyce acts more and more callous, ignoring her sister Jocelyne's calls (apparently still ignorant that Jocelyne no longer refers to herself as Joshua), rebuffing Sarah's attempts to reach out to her, and developing a sarcastic edge that she didn't have before. Her friends, well-intended and willful to help her, are getting more and more annoyed with her over time, and Joyce herself is blatantly ungrateful to them. Eventually things reach a breaking point, and she later tries to find a balance, although her friendship with Becky is now mostly dependent on neither of them ever mentioning religion to the other again.
• Trauma Conga Line: Before her first month at college is through, she's already been nearly date-raped, and then nearly been shot by her best friend's father.
• Unskilled, but Strong: Joyce lacks any genuine athleticism or training, but has reserves of strength she can tap into when her friends are threatened. This comes in handy when much of the cast is kidnapped in Book Ten, save for most of the regular brawlers.
• What the Hell, Hero?: In Book 14 she calls out Sarah on her hypocrisy concerning Joe, where she was infinitely patient with Joyce's bad habits even on her most obnoxious days, yet refuses to believe that Joe has changed or can change at all. Sarah seems to listen... before muttering to herself about how she needs to break them up.
• Yaoi Fangirl: Given her serious problems dealing with her sexuality, you shouldn't read too much into her response to finding out gay porn exists. Nevertheless...

Mary Bradford

Roz's super-uptight room-mate, whose main personality traits are her "judging you" face and being even more of a fundamentalist than Joyce.

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• Adaptational Villainy: Downplayed. Mary was always a character defined by her selfishness and Holier Than Thou nature and her actions in DOA wouldn't be out of the question for her original Roomies character. That said, her bigotry and unpleasant nature are highlighted a lot more this time around. Notably, while Mary was an asshole in the original strip she wasn't an antagonist so much as a difficult part of Danny and Joyce's life; DOA Mary is one of this strip's villains and much more dangerous.
• Big "NO!": When the only volunteers for her 'prayer meeting' are a Mormon and a hippy who wants to dissolve gender roles.
• Blackmail:
  • Mary has found out about Billie and Ruth's relationship, and she's not above holding it over Billie, either. If it had been anyone else, she probably wouldn't need to be concerned, but...
  • The penny drops when she explicitly blackmails Ruth so she doesn't get in trouble for deliberately misgendering Carla.
• Bullying a Dragon: Yes, Mary. Kick Ruth while she's strung out and can't move against you this very second. That can't go wrong at all...
  • Mugging the Monster: Also, Carla's totally not a threat.
• Egocentrically Religious: Bratty Faith variant. Mary is deeply religious but self-important in her religion, believing her own doctrine as inherently superior to many of the other religious students, and she has the obnoxious Holier Than Thou attitude to go along with it.
• Even Evil Has Standards: She's a massive bitch, but not even she would approve of Ryan using his faith to rape women.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Upon hearing Ruth mention a "charade" (pretending not to be depressed and hungover), she instantly assumes Ruth trying to stand up for Carla was done for the sake of "liberal brownie points". Ruth's brain visibly short-circuits trying to process this.
• Evil Counterpart: To Joyce. Both begin the strip as religious fundamentalists with narrow worldviews. Yet while Joyce is a Love Freak who doesn't realize that there's a lot of poison in her upbringing and begins Character Development immediately, Mary looks down her nose at everyone.
• Eviler than Thou: Everyone's aware that Ruth is a terrible Resident Assistant, but after finding out what Mary did to her, they unanimously agree that Mary is far worse.
  Mary: [After Billie punches her and everyone does nothing but glare at Mary in pure contempt.] Why are you siding with her against me? It was Ruth who was a terrible R.A.!
  Rachel: Yeah, she was. But we can multitask.
• Fan of the Past: She worships Ronald Reagan, declaring him "the last great President". Then Roz points out a few things...
• Finger-Tenting: Yeah, she's evil.
• Foil: To Joyce, as with Evil Counterpart. If Joyce is a religious fundamentalist gone right, then Mary is definitely one gone wrong.
• The Fundamentalist: Joyce is intensely religious, but at least tries to be friendly and understanding of others. Mary doesn't.
• Hated by All: No one on the floor likes her, and when she gets socked by Billie for trying to turn her against Carla despite the fact Mary's blackmail led to Ruth getting into a bad enough state that she's in the hospital no one stands up for her. She also doesn't appear to have a single friend among the student body.
• Hate Sink: At best Mary is a Jerk with a Heart of Jerk. She's selfish, bigoted, condescending, and her appearances all usually revolve around how unpleasant she is. Compare to many of the other antagonists in the comic, she's probably the least extreme but also the one you'd most likely meet in real-life.
• Holier Than Thou: "Everyone's done something wrong" (except her, obviously).
• Hypocrite:
  • Mary immediately shames Walky for doing nothing when he suspected that something was wrong in Billie's life, blaming him for any harm that might result from his silence. This, after she knew far more about the situation than he ever did and was outright blackmailing both parties.
  • Later on, the series' biggest Holier Than Thou jerkass expresses disgust that Ryan would use his faith to justify anything.
• Jerkass:
  • When asked if she had any redeeming features whatsoever, Willis replied "she draws okay." (And has reasonable rates, apparently.)
  • After a few strips of a fairly childish feud with Carla, she suddenly sinks to a whole new low by deliberately misgendering her.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Gets hit with a truckload of this after a while.
  • After misgendering Carla and then blackmailing Ruth to get away with it, Carla sets up an elaborate prank on her, being fairly delebirate in that she's planning something to make Mary nervous. Then getting Mary to steal a box from her containing a pie to the face, followed by a giant laser display of Carla's name, to rub Mary's face in the fact she exists.
  • After trying to use her blackmail to get a prayer going during the dorm meeting, Ruth ignores the issue entirely and Mary's attempt to pray after only attract the attention of a Mormon and a gender role breaking hippie.
  • After Ruth is hospitalized by the psychological damage Mary caused, Billie gives Mary a taste- no mouthful of her own medicine by telling everyone in the dorm how Mary blackmailed her and Ruth, so they know to go to the Resident Manager with that information should Mary try to mess with them too. Now she can't even report Billie for punching her without getting exposed as a blackmailer.
  • Finally after trying to out Ruth as an alchoholic after blackmailing her and said blackmail lands Ruth in the psyche ward, she gets punched in the face by Billie and finds out the entire dorm can't stand her.
• Obviously Evil: No one who spends much time with Mary doubts that she's a horrible person. When Billie tells everyone in the dorm how Mary blackmailed her and Ruth, no-one is surprised. Some had even guessed.
  Rachel: (to Grace) What's your ballpark figure on how many puppies she's murdered?
• No True Scotsman: She doesn't consider Robin a true "family values" candidate because she comes from divorced parents and is unmarried at 30, which Mary considers "conspicuous." She also doesn't consider Mormons or Catholics to be true Christians.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: Her color scheme tends to favor these colors. (Contrary to her character image above.)
• Sex Is Evil, and I Am Horny: It's only hinted at, but when Mary sets up a "hell house" for Halloween, one or two of the tableaux manage to involve her boyfriend getting naked. Mary claims that this "doesn't count" in something inspired by the Bible, but given her visible blushes when talking about the subject, readers may guess that she's feeling more Lust for him than she'll admit.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Mary sees herself as kind of a big deal among the residents. In her first interaction with Malaya, she claims to be the one running the show, and that Ruth is R.A in name only.
• Smug Snake: She seems to think simply having blackmail material makes her invincible. Too bad for her she's not exactly a master manipulator; her attempts thus far have embarrassingly blown up in her face.
• Straight Man: Her limited non-asshole interactions with people consist mostly of bemoaning the wacky nature of the setting and the rest of the cast. Comes to a head when her attempts to study clashes with Carla's distracting antics.
• Tautological Templar: Mary doesn't even get what little sympathy comes with being a Well-Intentioned Extremist. Her interactions with Ruth and Carla prove that she only cites her so-called moral high-ground when it serves her own interests. For example, no matter what her beliefs regarding same-sex relationships, Blackmail is not the Christian way.
• Unholy Matrimony: Mary has somehow found a boyfriend as obnoxious and Holier Than Thou as herself, to her floormates' disgust.
• Villain Decay: In her early appearances, Mary is an unpleasantly effective bully, guessing what will really hurt her victims and engineering an effective blackmail plot. However, after these schemes are defeated, she becomes more of a joke, coming up with things like a Christian-themed "hell house" for Halloween that just makes her an easy target for mockery. Also, by that time, other villains have appeared and threatened the cast with actual physical harm and ruined lives, and Mary just looks trivial by comparison.

Malaya Eugenio

A roller-derby skater who hangs out with Sal and Marcie.

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• Adaptational Nice Girl: Was much more callous and even The Bully at times along with Carla to people like Lucy in Shortpacked!, where as here she's just more generally bitter, only really having it out for Sal due to hating the latter's attitude.
• Adaptational Romance Downgrade: They and Carla aren't together like they are in Shortpacked!.
• Ambiguous Gender Identity: Malaya has occasional moments where she expresses self-doubt about her identity as a woman, and starts going by "she/they/whatever" in the second semester.
  Malaya: Did you always know you were a girl?
  Carla: Ffft. Pretty much, yeah. Right away.
  Malaya: ...oh.
  Carla: But, um— some people don't figure things out until they're, like, forty. And that's okay.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Well, the friend Sal doesn't like, anyway. Carla displays some early skepticism but soon, like Marcie, develops a crush on her.
• Head Pet: Fuckface the Iguana, though as Indiana University doesn't allow pets, he spends a lot less time on assorted characters' heads than he might otherwise.
• Hidden Depths: Malaya's gradually revealed to be getting good marks in art class, a valued member of a local roller derby team, and a good friend to Marcie (she even starts learning sign language!) If she seems like kind of a one-dimensional jerk, it's because we mostly see them through Sal's eyes,.
• Jerkass: They're often unnecessarily confrontational and rude, especially to anyone she perceives as "phony", and makes a show of sleeping with Joe in order to become more hated.
• Ms. Fanservice: She has a high opinion of her own attractiveness, and it shows in her dress sense. The comic tends to frame certain areas on occasion as well, especially when Malaya's being seen from Marcie's perspective.
• Oblivious to Love: Spends a good long time completely oblivious to Marcie's crush on her, despite Marcie not being especially subtle about it. One strip implies this is because Malaya feels Marcie is always straight with them, while another shows that Malaya's gender being uncertain means she doesn't expect attention from women attracted to women.
• Phrase Catcher:
  Sal: Goddammit, Malaya.
• Sitcom Archnemesis: With Sal, whose entire persona she's deemed a facade sight unseen, and who cannot under any circumstances be persuaded otherwise. As of Book 10 they seem to have called a ceasefire, for Marcie's sake.

Rachel Jackson

One of the dorm residents in the Clark Wing, and not a big fan of Ruth. In some ironic twist of fate, she shares a room with the only other Rachel on campus.

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• Deadpan Snarker: She's a very minor character in the comic, but more than half her spoken lines seem to be some kind of snide or sarcastic remark.
• Irrational Hatred: Rachel hates Ruth with a passion, enough for it to turn her into a jerkass when Ruth is nearby. When Ruth attempts to apologize for her past actions, Rachel lays into her with a "The Reason You Suck" Speech, while simultaneously claiming Ruth tricked Billie into a relationship and gets to keep both her and her job, acting as if Billie has little agency of her own. She then goes out of her way to insult or confront Ruth whenever they cross paths, including claiming Ruth has no feelings as Ruth is bawling in the communal showers, or her seeing Ruth is doing better and happy one morning only to try and drudge up the past in order to knock her down again. Her hatred is hinted to stem from when the two were roommates in freshman year, and that only Rachel remembers due to Ruth's mental illness causing her to forget. Booster theorizes that the real reason she's so aggressive towards Ruth is guilt for not saying anything sooner back when she really leaned into the "Ruthless" persona.
• Kick Them While They're Down: Whether or not Ruth deserved her "The Reason You Suck" Speech, Rachel still decided to hit her with it soon after Ruth had been discharged from the hospital on suicide watch, as she was attempting to apologize for her behavior.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted, as her roommate's name is also Rachel. Ruth has addressed them as "Rachels" on occasion.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: She's not wrong to give Ruth a "The Reason You Suck" Speech and that her relationship with Billie is unhealthy, but her outrage that Ruth gets to keep her RA job is entirely directed at the wrong abuser, unaware that Ruth was forced into the job by her grandfather.
• Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids!: She doesn't believe redemption exists. Rather, she feels that it is nothing more than an excuse shitty people use to try and hide from what they've done while also giving them an excuse to be more shitty.
• Small Role, Big Impact: Doesn't appear often, but her one major interaction with Ruth manages to domino effect into Ryan getting stabbed.
• Unrelated in the Adaptation: Co-created Ultra Car, who eventually became Carla, with Joe in the original continuity and served as her surrogate mother. Here Carla is a human who's about the same age as Rachel, with different parents.

Rachel Moore (AKA Other Rachel)

Rachel's roommate, generally referred to as "Other Rachel." She's a big fan of Amazi-Girl.

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• Adaptation Dye-Job: In her original Walkyverse incarnation, she had brown hair. In this comic her hair has been made purple, to better visually distinguish her from Amber.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted; she's one of two Rachels, not only in the same dorm but in the same room.

Rebecca Leah "Becky" MacIntyre

"Just don't let anyone change you, okay?"

Joyce's best friend from childhood. Attending Anderson University, a Christian college. She's pretty social for someone from Joyce's Christian group. Following Book 10, she's transferred over to IU.

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• Anguished Declaration of Love: Seen in this strip, where Becky tearfully begs Joyce to return her feelings.
• Ascended Extra: Becky had a whopping eight appearances prior to Book 5, which immediately shot her into the main cast.
• Birds of a Feather: Becky and Walky get along really well within seconds of meeting each other, bonding over their shared love of eliciting humorous reactions from Joyce.
• Butch Lesbian: Self described "soft butch" as she favors a side-cut and boyish clothes.
• Didn't Think This Through: Definitely didn't count on Blaine's favoring spite over self-preservation when she tries to defeat him by doxxing him at the end if Book Ten.
• Divergent Character Evolution: In the Walkyverse, Becky was essentially Joyce with red hair and freckles, even down to having a very similar hairstyle as Joyce, albeit somewhat messier. In Dumbing of Age, she's gained personality traits of her own, and is considerably bolder and goofier.
• Evil Stole My Faith: An aversion—despite all the bad things happening to her done in the name of religion (or using it as an excuse), she still considers herself a Christian and a believer. She decided when Dina kissed her for the first time that "God answers lesbian prayers", and since then has seen every averted disaster in her life as the Lord looking out for her. It's worth mentioning because of contrast with Joyce, her best friend and a former fundamentalist, who's a straight example of the trope by the time of Book Eleven.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Joyce is seen in several strips trying to unsuccessfully get a hold of Becky, foreshadowing Becky's troubles at school.
  • For a short amount of time her character description mentioned that "she loves Joyce more than anything."
• God Before Dogma: Despite the homophobia she suffered because of her church, she refuses to leave her faith behind, considering her Christianity to be just as fundamental a part of her identity as being gay.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: With Joyce—except for the part where Becky isn't actually heterosexual. She compensates for this by being as close to Joyce as she can, and playing up the idea that Joyce's other best friend Dorothy is a hated romantic rival for comic effect.
• Hypocrite:
  • Accuses Joyce of being self-righteous during their Plot-Mandated Friendship Failure in Book 12. Her attitude later in the book, as well as her general fickleness concerning people she even suspects doesn't have her best interests at heart, makes it seem as though she's the one with the superiority complex.
  • For all that Joyce gives up to defend her right to be a lesbian, she's pretty intolerant of Joyce becoming an atheist, ignoring Joyce's trauma based reasons for why that is.
• Hypocrite Has a Point: Despite Becky's hypocrisy over her inability to accept Joyce's choices, she's correct that Joyce's Hollywood Atheist turn isn't doing anyone favors, as Dina is an atheist but Becky has no issues dating her because of it.
• Important Haircut: Gets an undercut (somehow longer than her original 'do) shortly after joining the main cast in Book Five, which briefly scandalizes Joyce and Hank, and becomes a major point of contention for Ross and the rest of their hometown church in La Porte.
• Incompatible Orientation: Becky, after figuring out she's a lesbian during her time apart from Joyce, assumes Joyce has come to a similar revelation in her absence. She learns the hard way that Joyce hasn't.
• Innocently Insensitive: Like Joyce, she has some evangelism-induced blind spots, but it's much more rare for her to accidentally say something bigoted. For Becky, the bigger problem is that she seldom thinks before telling jokes or doing something wacky, and occasionally gets taken more seriously than she intends to.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: She had a whopping eight appearances before a 2015 storyline in which she runs away from Anderson to come out to Joyce as a lesbian, at which point she began living in the area and her profile skyrocketed. The book in which this storyline is printed features her on the cover and is titled Hey, Guess What, I'm a Lesbian!.
• Love Epiphany: After she kisses Joyce, she tells her that she had always been in love with her, but it wasn't until they went to separate colleges that she figured it out.
• Missing Mom: According to Willis in this comment chain, she is currently worm food. A later strip implies that she committed suicide and Becky was the one who found her.
• Morality Pet: Robin genuinely likes Becky, and will do actually altrusitic things to help her.
• Nice Girl: Becky can be a bit crude at times, but she's overall a very nice person.
• Odd Friendship: Considering her similarities to Walky (who Joyce can't stand), her friendship with Joyce and their extreme fondness of each other is pretty out there.
• Only Sane Man: Becky lacks many of Joyce's neuroses and hangups, which makes her this to Joyce...and basically only to Joyce.
• Only Sane by Comparison: Sure she's still weird compared to other characters in the university like Dorothy or even her own girlfriend. But compared to the other people from her fundamentalist community (Including Joyce), she's a lot more well adjusted and capable of operating in the secular world without issue.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Their full first name is Rebecca, but she goes by Becky most of the time.
• Relationship Upgrade: Ends up dating Dina.
• Sad Clown: Becky puts up a facade of cheerfulness, but at assorted points during the comic she's been homeless, kidnapped, and dealing with two dead parents.
• Stepford Smiler: Becky feels that if she dwells on any of the hardship in her life, or confides in other people, they'll think she's a bummer and she'll drive them away, and so she hides her troubles under a happy veneer. Lampshaded when Becky is upset that Joyce has become an atheist and didn't tell her: Joyce retorts that Becky hides everything behind jokes and a smile herself, to which Becky has no reply.
• Their First Time: She has sex for the first time with Dina.
• Took a Level in Cynic: One tragedy after another is taking its toll on Becky's belief in the goodness of others. When Robin gives her time off to properly cope with her father's death, Becky accuses her of laying her off just before the elections, and refuses to believe for a second that Robin actually cares about her.
• Unknown Rival: She seems to think she and Dorothy are bitter rivals for the position of Joyce's BFF. Dorothy does not. Made even funnier after as of Book Eleven, now that they're roommates. At some point Dorothy's position went from "I don't understand what you're talking about" to "I know this is a thing you do and I respect that but do not reciprocate", but by that point it had largely turned into a bit anyway. When she actually upset Dorothy, her immediate reaction was basically "How can I fix this without admitting that's what I'm doing?"
• Unrequited Love: After a bit of angst, she tells Joyce she understands that she was rejected and goes back to her flippant nature, but there have been a few strips that show Becky isn't as okay with the rejection as she let on. Certainly not helped by the period she spends not only living with Joyce, but sharing a bed with her. Fortunately for her, she later ends up dating Dina, and their relationship is far less dramatic than those of her peers.
• Wasn't That Fun?: Her immediate reaction to her dad's car overturning after a near-collision. "Again!!!"

Roz DeSanto

Robin's extremely liberal younger sister, with very strong ideas on sexual freedom.

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• Adaptational Nice Guy: Roz is considerably less selfish from the get-go in this version. In the conflict with her sister, the audience's intended sympathy has been switched from Shortpacked!; rather than Roz being a mooching Annoying Younger Sibling, much of her criticisms against Robin and her ideology are completely justified.
• Distaff Counterpart: To Joe. (The joke is that they're the same age in this continuity, so they find and sleep with each other in the first week.)
• Establishing Character Moment: Handing out prophylactics. Just after having casual sex with Joe (which she recorded).
• Ethical Slut: Roz's sexual ethics are pretty strong, making a point of—for instance—asking Joe if it's okay to tape their encounter. She also goes out of her way to promote safe sex and counseling for rape victims. Her ethics on things that aren't sex are a bit iffy, however, as she's often been mean to Joyce when it's clear she's doing more harm than good, and may or may not have been planning to out her bisexual older sister.
• Everyone Has Standards: She may dislike Joyce, but she's willing to back off after Ross attempts to kidnap Becky.
• The Matchmaker: Trying to set up Robin and Leslie.
• Middle Child Syndrome: Booster makes the case that the desire to stand out between Robin and Riley fuels a good deal of Roz's actions.
• Rightly Self-Righteous: There's a definite performative aspect to Roz's politics, even if she is completely genuine in her beliefs, and she can condescend to people a lot.
• Skewed Priorities: When post-timeskip Ruth describes the previous semester as "balls-to-the-wall garbage", Roz calls for "nuance" because her sister didn't get elected. Keep in mind that in Book 10 alone multiple people got kidnapped from the dorm and one student from the boys' wing ended up dead.
• Sibling Rivalry: With Robin. Not only are Robin's reactionary, anti-choice politics the complete reverse of Roz's, but Robin repeatedly treats her like a prop for her campaign.
• Soapbox Sadie:
  • She's progressive but tends to be rather obnoxious, condescending, and self-righteous about it.
    Roz: The "church" that forced kids out of their homes and into the streets? That was you. Until today, that was you.
  • Roz is also nonplussed that Leslie is adamantly not okay with Roz shaming Joyce in the class. Roz asks if Joyce gets a pass for shouting over and ignoring gay people her whole life, to which Leslie counters "Said the straight girl to the gay girl who's been asking her to shut up for the past five minutes." When called on her hypocrisy, Roz leaves the class.
• Touché: Roz at one point told Leslie that she knows enough about gender studies to teach the class herself. Leslie ends up taking her up on it and leaves Roz to teach a class on "performative allyship and the de-amplifying of marginalized voices".
  Roz: ...Well played.

Ruth "Ruthless" Lessick

"Time for 'random' drug searches."

The RA of Joyce's dorm, Ruth basically sets herself up as a dictator who keeps her "subjects" in line through over-the-top threats. As the comic goes on, however, it becomes increasingly clear that she has issues...

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• 0% Approval Rating: Ruth's time as resident assistant is characterized by petty antagonism, verbal abuse, and threats of violence. She tries to make amends for her behavior after her breakdown in Book Six, to almost no effect. That said, the hall hates Mary more for blackmailing Ruth in her darkest hour—seemingly mostly on principle.
• Adaptational Angst Upgrade: In Roomies!, her depression and alcoholism was more understated and usually well-hidden behind a wall of good-natured wit. Here, she starts as a full-blown Straw Nihilist who pushes away everyone, has a habit of locking herself in her room to get drunk, and is so chronically suicidal that she eventually has to be hospitalized.
• Adaptational Jerkass: In Roomies!, she was a snarky Team Mom who only got violent in defense of her younger brother when Joe bullied him. Here, she starts as a bullying Control Freak of an R.A. who likes to beat, insult and threaten the students who disobey her, to the point that became known as "Ruthless" and is still mistrusted by most of her wing.
• Abusive Parents: Her parents are dead, but her grandfather is a verbally and emotionally abusive control freak who sees her as an investment instead of a person.
• Adaptational Nationality: In the Walkyverse she was presumably born and raised in the United States, but here she was originally born in Canada and immigrated following her parent's deaths.
• The Alcoholic: Her parents' death by drunk driver really did a number on her, and she ironically spent a long time afterwards drinking to cope. Following her breakdown in Book Six and subsequent prescription of antidepressants, she's managed to mostly stay on the wagon.
• Berserk Button: Don't mention the Ottawa Sens. And don't mention that they're doing better than her favoured team, the Toronto Maple Leafs. Naturally, Billie does both of these in quick succession.
• Canadian Equals Hockey Fan: Specifically, a Canadian die-hard Maple Leafs fan.
• Closet Key: Ruth was unaware she was into women before Billie turned up.
• Commonality Connection: She and Jason connect post-timeskip over being the two major non-American characters in the cast and how inane they find aspects of American culture.
• Crass Canuck: Ruth was born and raised in Canada and immigrated to the States after her parents' death. She is nicknamed "Ruthless" because she starts off as a terrifying resident assistant, verbally abusing the dorm residents, antagonizing anyone who slights her, and giving out copious threats of violence. She eventually gets better after working through her mental health issues, but she's still abrasive at best. Lampshaded by Billie during their first meeting:
  Billie: Aren't you people supposed to be nice?
  Ruth: May I please punch your sternum?
• Cut His Heart Out with a Spoon: Her threat to beat people to death with their own femurs if they skip the initial floor meeting becomes memetic In-Universe.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Her parents died in a car accident, because of a drunk driver. The fact that she became an alcoholic doesn't sit well for her at all because of that. And her hideously abusive, controlling grandfather doesn't help either.
• Drowning My Sorrows: Ruth got into drinking as an escape regarding her parent's death by drunk driver.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: When dealing with an uncharacteristically peppy Mary, and realizing someone needs to investigate her.
  Ruth: We need to suss this out on the down-low. But I'm not talking to her. I have a hard enough time wanting to continue my existence as it is. [...] Do we know any romantically stupid busy-bodies? ...Shit.
  [Answer Cut]
  Joyce: Well, well, well. Of all the rooms in this dorm, you had to walk into mine. [big dorky smile]
• Hidden Depths: For much of the dorm, Ruth is little but a petty tyrant and bully. Those that get close to her know that she's working through a lot of issues, depression and alcoholism among them, and with love and support from Billie she manages to start breaking a lot of her old habits. She's also, when the chips are down, capable of doing the RA jobs people actually need, defending her charges from abuse and talking to them when things go south.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: Ruth and Billie spend Books 1 through 3 being horribly antagonistic and abusive to each other. Midway through Book 3, Billie discovers the depths of Ruth's depression and alcoholism as well as Ruth's crush on her, and they become an Official Couple.
• Lesser of Two Evils: Many of the residents consider Mary to be much worse than Ruth, and would prefer her to Mary.
• Loving Bully: Deconstructed. She lashes out at Billie because she can't deal with being attracted to a former drunk driver and fellow alcoholic—and because of that lashing out, it takes Billie some time and a huge heart-to-heart for her to come around.
• Master of the Mixed Message: Prior to her and Billie getting together, she alternates between awkward displays of affection and outright bullying. As she lampshades:
  "Do I send any other kind?"
• Mama Bear: Ruth may not be good at interacting with the students she's supervising, but she'll go above and beyond to protect them. She's suplexed two of her charge's parents when they were banned from the dorm, one while so drunk she could barely walk.
• Meaningful Name:
  Dina: Ruth Lessick? Is that why you nicknamed her "Ruthless?"
  Mandy: Sshh I want to keep my femurs!
  • Unremarked upon, but she does eventually become less sick.
• Mirror Character:
  • To Billie, an alcoholic girl with absent parents and a willingness to use force to get her way.
  • To Amber, who has rage issues, an unhealthy coping mechanism, and a fear of becoming her abusive father figure.
• Mood-Swinger
  Walky: Your unpredictable mood changes are frightening an' disorienting.
  Ruth: Awww, thanks for noticing.
• Odd Friendship: With Billie. Escalates to Official Couple.
• Offscreen Breakup: With Billie, during the post-Book Ten timeskip. As Booster is quick to lampshade, this causes Ruth to try acting like her Ruthless persona again as a means of coping, only to fail thanks to Billie having changed her too much.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Ruth is not one of nature's most cheerful people, even without the baggage she has. So when Billie finds her being nice, and saying it's good to see her, she's alarmed.
  Billie: Oh my god. They drugged the shit out of you, didn't they.
  Ruth: Uh, yeah. Duh. You were there when they started handing me pills yesterday.
• Parental Abandonment: Her parents were killed by a drunk driver.
• Pet the Dog: She doesn't want to be RA and thinks she's horribly unqualified for it. She does it anyway:
  • Ruth quickly gets a handle on what Amber's damage is without Amber ever actually talking to her about it, and does her best to try and talk her through it no matter how unreceptive Amber is.
  • Dorothy, worried about her deteriorating mental health, asks Ruth to check in on her in Book Seven, and Ruth follows through after she and Walky break up in Book Eight. (Her sympathy to Dorothy's issues with Danny in Book One is an early sign she's not all bad.)
  • When Ruth discovers Becky's living in the dorms after fleeing her homophobic father, Ruth does her best to pretend she doesn't know Becky's there.
• Redemption Quest: After her breakdown, Ruth seems to be trying to work her way toward redemption. Though Rachel for one is brutally cynical about the idea.
• Refuge in Audacity: How she gets away with her over-the-top threats and occasionally abusive behaviour.
• Relationship Upgrade: With Billie. They both know they're toxic presences, that they're struggling alcoholics and they'll probably kill themselves or each other at some point. They don't care. After being given medication though, Ruth loses her Death Seeker mindset, whereas Billie's refusal to change puts their relationship on the rocks.
• Scary Shiny Glasses: A few times, when in "performative autocrat" mode.
• Significant Green-Eyed Redhead: Is revealed to have green eyes from this strip onwards, which Willis points out is when her character starts becoming more rounded and more human to her Love Interest.
• Sleepy Depressive: Demonstrates a general reluctance to get out of bed, which—during her breakdown in Book Six—progresses to a tendency to leave the lights off and eventually a complete inability to get up to fulfill even basic needs.
• Spared by the Adaptation: In Roomies!, she was created for the sole purpose of tragically dying in a car accident. In Dumbing of Age, she has a significantly expanded role, as well as having survived a previously occurring car accident.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Compared to how many of the other cast members "grew" over the timeskip, Ruth is a lot less needlessly aggressive and more proactive in trying to help people, even if it's not her job to like with Jason.
• Tsundere: Deconstructed: Ruth behaves this way because she has anti-social tendencies and a bad home life. Billie confronts Ruth demanding to know what their relationship is, after weeks of Ruth alternating between (awkward) displays of affection and bullying. When Ruth suddenly kisses her during all of this, she tells her to fuck off and runs away. Billie is very confused and hurt by whatever attraction she does feel. It's still played for comedy, but the situation is acknowledged by Willis as unhealthy and just wrong.]]
• Who Would Be Stupid Enough?: Carol tries to scare her away by saying she would be stupid to lay a hand on her. Ruth informs her how stupid she actually is, with a smile on her face.
  Ruth: Oh, you'd be surprised how much stupid shit I do.
• Wrestler in All of Us:
  • In "Urrgl", she suplexes Blaine. It's just a shame it wasn't more permanent.
  • She also, sadly off camera, tackles and throws Carol out as Joyce did not want to see her.

Sally Elizabeth "Sal" Walkerton

"Did ah say 'uptight'? Ah think ah meant 'nuts'."

Walky's twin sister, a rebel with a distinct southern accent. She spent some time in a private school, but it seems to have only made her worse. "Shares" a room with Billie.

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• Aloof Dark-Haired Girl: She has long, dark hair, a stoic and aloof attitude, and attracts admirers whether or not she wants to.
• Ambiguously Brown: In-universe when Joyce tries asking what race the Walkerton twins are.
  Joyce: I... I've been trying to determine if it's rude to ask what, um, flavor of human you two are.
  Walky: Well, my sister is black, but I'm generically beige.
• The Atoner: She considers herself responsible for Marcie losing her voice - after she choked a bully in retribution for him mistreating Marcie, he crushed Marcie's throat with a rock. Her convenience store robberies were because she needed money to make amends.
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: After Walky admits he hasn't been a good brother in the past. There are limits, though.
  Sal: We ain't never been a huggin' family, huh?
• Badass Biker: Her preferred mode of transportation is a motorbike and she's a good brawler, to the point of winning fights when outnumbered alongside Amazi-Girl. She loses the "Biker" part after book 10, once it was revealed that she was able to keep her motorbike on campus to begin with thanks to her mom pulling some strings.
• Berserk Button: Does not take kindly to being pigeonholed, simplified, or otherwise analyzed.
• Combat Pragmatist: Played with: When Amazi-Girl challenges her to a fight, she just has her friends dogpile her. Though after she's restrained, Sal opts to leave rather than actually beat her up.
• Commander Contrarian: Part of her anti-authoritarian nature means that if told not to do something by a figure of authority, she'll do the exact opposite.
• Conspicuous Gloves: Sal always wears her distinctive gloves to hide the knife wound on one of her hands, even when sleeping in the nude. As one of the Slipshine comics shows, she even wears them during sex.
• Cool Bike: Owns a pretty cool motorcycle. Joyce has written theme songs for it.
• Cool People Rebel Against Authority: She's very anti-authoritarian and, in her own words, doesn't like "organized anything."
  Becky: So... Billie moved out an' gave me her bed 'cuz my dad found out I'm gay an' I got pulled outta school an' I'm homeless an' please don't tell anyone in charge an' also she said this would appeal to yer "innate desire to rebel against any an' all authority". Her words, not mine.
  Sal: (Beat) Tell Billie she was right, an' also "Fuck you, wiseass."
• Daddy's Girl: Perhaps by default. Her father makes a point of hugging and complimenting her on Parent's weekend while her mother is too obsessed with the idea of her brother actually having a girlfriend to even acknowledge Sal's presence—but her dad also tells her he prefers her hair straight, demonstrating some of the racism that keeps her at arm's length from her mom,
• Dark and Troubled Past: When we first meet her, she's returning to Walky and Billie's life after being sent away to boarding school for five years. She held up a couple of convenience stores—which she did because Sal's abusive mother confiscated the money Sal raised to get Marcie throat surgery. Sal raised that money because she felt responsible for Marcie losing her voice. She felt that way because Sal escalated a conflict between Marcie and a local bully. Said bully, incidentally, never faced consequences for his actions, which is a contributing factor to Sal's distrust of authority.
• Even the Girls Want Her: Well, at least Joyce and Billie do.
  Mike: For her, right? You'd be a lesbian for her. I mean, c'mon.
  Joyce: Oh, if only. I-it'd be nice, in theory, if I didn't have to deal with any parts below the neck.
• Expressive Hair: Her natural curls reasserted themselves when she is shocked by a bad grade.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: She keeps the curls for Parent's Weekend, only to have her Dad tell her he likes the way it looks when it's straightened. (Sal takes this as an implied criticism, though he's probably trying to be supportive.) So she "murders the curls" again and claims to prefer it that way, though that is undercut by her expression when she examines the results in a mirror afterwards. Her hair is slightly curly after the Book Ten timeskip, implying that she's begun to work through some of these feelings.
• Hell-Bent for Leather: Her leather jacket goes with her motorcycle.
  Walky: My parents sent her to a Catholic boarding school after she, y'know, held up two convenience stores. Though I kinda expected her to find Jesus, not leather.
• Hidden Depths:
  • Sal is fluent in American Sign Language thanks to her lifelong friendship with Marcie.
  • Sal had a dinosaur phase. She was able to answer to Dina that her favorite dinosaur was Pachycephalosaurus and bonds with her over talking about them.
  • She's a very musical person, to the point that it's implied she'd become a music major. She taught herself to play the bass and can hold a tune singing.
• Internalized Categorism: Her parents, especially Linda, have given her flack her whole life for her bad grades and rambunctious behavior, and shown favoritism to Walky for his smarts and ability to stay in line. These biases line up with stereotypes about Black people, and while Sal's shown little sign of hating herself for being Black, she has something of a complex about the whole thing which she expresses by "murdering the curls" out of her natural hair.
• Impaled Palm: After the convenience store holdup, Amber drove a knife through Sal's hand. This is why she always wears gloves.
• Indifferent Beauty: Despite being a Ms. Fanservice and knowing it, Sal generally doesn't put too much thought or stock in her looks, and is usually more focused on other things. In fact, it's implied she actually weaponizes Attractiveness Isolation rather than exploit her appearance.
  Sal: Bein' hot is a power you should use only to keep other folks comfortably at arms' length or to score the occasional free beer.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: More aloof than an outright jerk, but despite her attempts to stay away from the issues of the cast, she almost always steps up to help them when asked. Notable instances include helping Joyce work through her post-Ryan issues and searching for Billie all night after she went missing.
• The Lad-ette: She's aloof, likes alcohol, can throw and take a punch, and isn't above sleeping with the TA for better grades.
• Ms. Fanservice: Sal looks good in pretty much anything she wears, and sleeps mostly nude. She has easily won all polls for "Hottest DoA Character" and most character's first reaction to her is slack-jawed awe.
• The Nicknamer: Mainly because she doesn't learn most people's real names, preferring to keep people at arm's length. Her nickname for Danny, "Wonderbread", is friendlier than a lot of them.
  • Inverted for her brother, Walky - as his nickname is based on their shared surname (Walkerton), she feels it's weird to use it and insists on calling him David.
• Noodle Incident: She somehow lost her virginity due to an Apples to Apples game at her boarding school.
• Not a Morning Person: What with spending all night out, Sal tends to be very grouchy in the morning. Joyce and Becky, who tend to wake people by hovering directly over them with friendly smiles at the crack of dawn, learn this the hard way when they find her hands around their necks.
• Oblivious to Love: Not regarding anyone who has a crush on her, but for the longest time she just couldn't figure out the glaringly obvious reason why Marcie wanted to hang out with Malaya so much.
  Sal: Whaddaya mean, you already told me? Ah think ah woulda remembered this.
  [Flashback]
  Marcie: [signing] That? I wanna hit. ^note This odd, somewhat misleading sentence is likely due to the unusual syntax that ASL uses
  Sal: [clenching her fist] Oh, ah'd love to punch 'er, too.
• Odd Friendship:
  • Amazi-Girl, an authoritarian vigilante, probably would've caught Sal's ire even if their first encounter wasn't Amazi-Girl initiating a parking lot brawl. In fact, they spend a long time hating each other, but Book Seven sees them forming an uneasy truce against Ryan and his defenders that eventually blossoms into friendship. Amber, naturally, doesn't handle this great, but Sal makes the first move to bury the hatchet in Book Nine, and now they do roller derby together.
  • By contrast, Sal's relationship with Danny is a lot less complicated, but no less strange: Danny reads comic books, majors in computer science, and is a white guy with a ukulele. He's still basically the first IU student Sal openly acknowledges as a friend, and one of few she chooses as a confidant.
• Official Couple: She and Danny start dating post-timeskip.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Sal's a temperamental sort, especially when the subject of her parents and their favoritism towards Walky comes up, so when Linda sends Walky a large box of cookies and Sal barely anything... she just shrugs it off. The fact that she's used to this is a sign she's resigned how badly that relationship has deteriorated: her earlier anger was because Walky refused to acknowledge the problem.
  • Sal allows her hair to go natural and dresses and behaves like a very different girl on parents' weekend — all to no avail as her mother ignores her anyway, though she does get some attention from her father.
• Polar Opposite Twins: The cool, aloof rebel to Walky's immature, outgoing dork. As kids, they had more in common, but Walky's good grades and deferral to authority kept him from the forced maturity and learned cynicism Sal got from dealing with Linda.
• Rebel Relaxation: She does this a lot (leading Joyce to imitate her), and even asks Jason to prop her up like this when she's too wasted to manage it herself.
• Sibling Rivalry: With Walky, for their parents' attention.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: What with her temper, and her general disregard for social norms, Sal does swear often. Especially when she's really annoyed (like, say, when getting too into Mario Kart...)
• Stealth Hi/Bye: Prefers windows to doors, a trait she shares with her mainline-canon counterpart.
• Strong Family Resemblance: With Walky, though it's much less apparent when her hair is natural.
• Teacher/Student Romance: Screws her TA (Jason) hoping to improve her math grade, and when that doesn't work screws him again to show him how angry she is. And then a few more times after that...
• There Was a Door: While not exactly to the extent of the original Sal, she does have a habit, which initially annoys Billie. A lot.
  Billie: OUR ROOMMATE AGREEMENT WILL REQUIRE THE USE OF FUCKING DOORS! DO YOU HEAR ME?!
• The Unfavorite: And extremely irked that her brother still refuses to acknowledge it.
  • She refuses to drop her math class despite initially struggling because she doesn't want another lecture from her parents about how she's a failure.
  • Sal even brings this up when acknowledging Walky & Billie's Like Brother and Sister relationship.
    Billie: Hell, sometimes I accidentally call your parents 'mom and dad'.
    Sal: Glad they got at least one daughter they like.
  • Made even worse when Mrs. Walkerton sends them a care package. Walky and Billie get similarly sized boxes filled with cookies (which incidentally include Billie's favourite), while Sal gets a much smaller box. And after some digging from Walky, all he finds is another box for Dorothy. The absolute worst part? Sal isn't even fazed by it.

Sarah Clinton

"I wish for everyone to have happy, strife-free futures ahead of them. Because keeping up with everyone's drama and preforming sympathy is friggin' exhausting."

A cynical and antisocial sophomore, who ends up rooming with Joyce.

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• Adaptational Heroism: Roomies! Sarah was a one-note grouch with little to no redeeming qualities and who took the side of one of It's Walky!'s villains for petty reasons. She's still a grouch here, but much more well-rounded and not at all villainous.
• Being Good Sucks: In her freshman year, her roommate Dana developed a drug dependency following the death of her mother. Sarah called her father, who took Dana out of school. Because Sarah was openly antisocial and found Dana's behavior a hindrance to her studying, Raidah and the rest of Dana's friends read the worst possible intentions into her actions, starting a rivalry that continues into the comic's present day.
• Big Sister Instinct: Sarah acts as Joyce's elder sister figure and is quite protective of her. It subsequently turns out that she's also protective of her actual younger sister, Liz (who she actually likes a lot less).
• Cynicism Catalyst: Averted: The Dana incident mentioned above is set up to be this. Turns out Sarah has always been, in her own words, a "bitchy killjoy misanthrope."
• Foil: To Joyce, whose aggressively social tendencies throw Sarah's desire for solitude into sharp relief.
• Good Is Not Nice: Sarah prefers, above basically all else, to be alone. She hates holding conversations. She hates sitting with other people to eat. She hates other people knowing even basic facts about her. Her ideal birthday party consists of an empty room, a cat, and a cake she doesn't have to share. In an ideal world, she'd basically never interact with anyone. But Joyce needs her, and Dina likes her, and so, reluctantly, she's begun to try and meet them both halfway, and will come to their aid with only token complaint. It has also been somewhat deconstructed as her generally unfriendly demeanor means that people that don't know her very well (such as Lucy) have no reason to see her as anything other than a Jerkass.
• Hidden Heart of Gold: At the end of Book 1, Sarah confesses to actually caring about Joyce under her prickly demeanor.
• I Did What I Had to Do: Sarah was forced to inform her last roommate Dana's father about her depression and drug abuse, which led to him taking her out of school. Since Dana was a Stepford Smiler and none of her friends caught on, they all consider Sarah to have crossed the Moral Event Horizon in order to preserve her scholarship.
• Insult Backfire: Here.
  Danny: Geez, Sarah, you're even pissier than I am.
  Sarah: Thank you.
• I Resemble That Remark!:
  Joyce: She speaks entirely in sarcasm.
  Sarah: Oh, right, that's all I do.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Downplayed. "That person I hate isn't bangin' that guy she absolutely doesn't deserve anymore. And it only destroyed Joyce a little bit."
• Not a Morning Person: She'd like to bottle Joyce's "morning-person-ness"... and fire it into the Sun.
• Not So Above It All:
  • Sarah's gone on the record repeatedly that she hates "high school drama"—fraught romances, avoidable misunderstandings, basically all the petty social cruft around what's supposed to be a learning experience. This doesn't stop her from trying to break up Jacob and Raidah, and eventually manipulating Joyce into trying to seduce him.
  • She's had the occasional "Not So Different" Remark from Walky.
• Odd Friendship: With Dina. At first, her lack of mastery of social niceties made her a perfect fit for Sarah, who can't be bothered with any of them. Dina's increasing desire to learn those niceties and have friends, however, is something Sarah can't understand.
• Took a Level in Cheerfulness: As time passes and her bond with Joyce intensifies, her influence is slowly but surely leading Sarah to open up and become a more positive person, leading to some playful, almost sisterly, banter between the two, whereas Joyce is turning a little more sour from all of her bad experiences. Lampshaded in this strip, where Sarah muses that they must share the same stockpile of happiness.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Sarah saving Joyce from Ryan didn't necessarily convince Joyce that Sarah cares about her, especially since (thanks to Ryan's roofie) Joyce has no recollection of the tender moment that followed. Since then, Sarah has been trying to show Joyce she cares in small, everyday ways. It doesn't come easy to her, but she's giving it her best effort.
• Your Approval Fills Me with Shame: Billie, as basically the embodiment of all the petty social drama that Sarah claims to hate, is one of the first to spot Sarah's plan to have Joyce break up Jacob and Raidah.
  Billie: I was head cheerleader. I invented this.
  Sarah: Ugh, now that you're leaving, who'll be the canary in my coal mine?

Sierra Snow

"I wanna pray too! ...For the dissolution of gender roles."

One of Joyce's religious friends, and Dorothy's roommate. A bit spacey but generally down to earth.

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• Alliterative Name: The only one in the cast (so far).
• Cloud Cuckoolander: Of the "space cadet" variety, contrasting with her roommate Dorothy.
• The Fundamentalist: Completely averted so far (Church of God, if anyone's curious), to the point that she seems to be fine with Dorothy and Walky's pre-marital hanky-panky. Seems to be excited about having a group to go to church with, but clearly disagrees with Mary and to some extent, Joyce's takes on religion. She also cheerfully talks about praying for the dissolution of gender roles.
• Happily Adopted: She's adopted and doesn't seem to have a problem with her parents.
• Huge Schoolgirl: Is one of the taller girls in the cast (without heels!), though no one calls any attention to it. Everyone else seems to be about average height.
• No Social Skills: Not in the same way as Joyce, but Sierra doesn't notice when she might need to leave the room.
• Polyamory: She is in a relationship with Grace, who's also in a relationship with Mandy, who's aware of this and okay with it. And sometimes Sierra makes out with Mandy (though whether it's an actual relationship or just making out is unclear).
• Prefers Going Barefoot: Although no-one noticed until she mentioned how a church carpet felt on her feet. When questioned, Sierra figures she hasn't worn shoes since sixth grade.
  Sierra: I just don't like shoes. My feet get claustrophobic.
• Recurring Extra: Essentially her role in the cast, as she has little to no involvement in the plot and no apparent personality flaws to further involve her...
• Unfazed Everyman: ...which also gives her shades of this, aside from her spaciness.